Connie and David Schofield sat at the island in the kitchen. On one side: Connie reading Ludlum’s latest paperback thriller The Chancellor Manuscript. On the other: David reading The Wachusett Morning Gazette. A picture of peace and tranquility. A picture worth a thousand words.
“Ungrateful degenerates.” David folded the paper and slid it across the island. It stopped at Connie’s elbow.
Connie continued reading with a cup of tea in one hand and the paperback in the other. This was usually her favorite time of the day—one of life’s golden moments, as she liked to call them. It was the one part of the day when she had a few minutes to herself to sit, sip, and read unhindered, uninterrupted. Josh would be upstairs in his room listening to music while getting ready for school, and David would be in the shower for twenty minutes. He never used to take showers that lasted more than five minutes. Funny—or maybe not funny at all—how people can change. With Joshua and David busy during this time, this was Connie’s opportunity to squeeze in quality reading time, if only for twenty minutes.
One of life’s golden moments.
This morning, the golden sheen of the moment was fading fast. Their fight last night—David called them disagreements, but they were fights, albeit not of the physical kind—had spilled over to this morning and thrown them off their routine. David had skipped the shower, which meant he was with Connie in the kitchen, disrupting her sitting and sipping and reading time and coloring her golden moment a dark shade of gray.
Connie had the distinct feeling that her darling David was about to color the whole morning completely black.
She sighed as she turned over the Ludlum book and laid it open on the island, careful not to bend the spine. She would like nothing more than to ignore David, but if she did it would only provoke another fight. She sipped her tea before setting the cup on the marble island top, not using the saucer next to the book. She picked up the paper and dragged her eyes across the expanse of the island, toward her husband.
“Which ‘ungrateful degenerates’?”
“Story at the bottom of the page.” David opened the refrigerator, reached for the orange juice, and retrieved the same glass he’d used earlier.
“‘Increased Wild Animal Sightings in the Area’?”
“No,” David said, drawing out the word while pouring juice into the glass. “Next to that.” He pointed to show her, just in case she couldn’t find the story on her own. “The one about the automobile crash.” He gulped down half the juice and set the glass on a white ceramic coaster. He nodded at the newspaper in her hands.
Connie stared at her husband. How could he do that? How could he be so frustratingly nonchalant after the accusations they’d hurled at each other in their bedroom last night? If he at least showed emotion—anger, frustration, fear…anything—it would give Connie something to hold on to, something at which she could direct her anger and frustration and fear. Instead, what she got from him was a blank slate as if nothing had happened. As if cruel things had not been said, even crueler things implied. As if no daggers had been thrust into each other’s hearts, and there were no wounds that needed to be cleansed with painful yet necessary verbal antiseptic before they could begin to heal.
As if…nothing.
Connie sighed again. She folded the paper, laid it on the counter, and began reading. A few minutes later she picked up the paper and read the story a second time, as if holding it closer to her would change the story, or at least make the story make some kind of sense. Halfway through the second reading she dropped the paper to the counter. Connie clasped her hands together. She was unable to stop them from shaking. She stared at the paper. At the names of the two boys.
David, who apparently had watched her read the entire article, finished the juice and set the glass down. “See what I mean?”
Connie opened her mouth to speak. No words came out.
David shrugged. “What?”
Connie watched her husband rinse the glass under the faucet, wipe it with a dish towel, and put it away in the cabinet. Three innocent, ordinary actions that people carried out thousands of times every day all across the country. She watched her husband carry out those ordinary actions in a robotic manner. Not that there should be a fanfare or emotional display with such actions. But, given the story to which he was referring, there ought to be something besides a cold, calculated, ever-efficient, automatic pilot feel to the way he carried out such actions. She came to the terrifyingly lonely realization of the river of resentment and blame and guilt and hurt that had run its course through the core of her husband, creating a chasm that now separated his head from his heart. A great divide, seemingly impossible to cross.
She lowered her eyes to the paper and started the story a third time, but stopped after the first paragraph. “David…” She looked up at him. His back was to her as he was about to open the refrigerator. “David, we know these boys…these…‘ungrateful degenerates’.”
With one hand on the refrigerator handle, David looked over his shoulder. “What?”
Connie clutched the paper, searching through it for pictures of the two boys. There were none. That didn’t matter. She could see them as if they were standing next to her. Brian with his carefree dimples that drove all the girls crazy, and his shy younger brother Dale. Connie thought of Sally and Hector and felt her eyes water. Those kids were everything to them.
David was at her side. He took the paper from her shaking hand. “Huh.” He shook his head and shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t recognize the names.”
He started to walk back to the refrigerator when Connie ripped the newspaper from his hand and tossed it across the island. It landed on the far end with a slap, skidded, then sailed off the edge and unfolded into sheets of black ink as it fluttered to the floor. David stared at her, his mouth open, hands frozen in position like he was still holding the paper.
“Brian and Dale Robinson.” Connie straightened her back and faced David. “Sally and Hector’s boys.”
David’s eyes danced to the left, the right, up, down, before focusing on Connie. “Oh.” His arms dropped to his sides. “Sally and Hector.”
“I can’t believe you don’t know the names of their children.”
David raised his hands palms out and backed away. “Connie, it’s not a crime if I don’t remember a couple kids’ names.”
“‘Ungrateful degenerates’.” Connie stared at David.
On the opposite side of the island David planted both hands on the counter and leaned forward. “Perhaps I was a bit harsh in my choice of words. However, it does not change my assessment of the facts.”
“Assessment of the facts?” Connie started to get up, stopped, and lowered herself back onto the bar stool. She looked down at The Chancellor Manuscript, unable to recall what she’d read moments ago, or even what the plot was. Her eyes drifted to the teacup. She stared at it. There was no hint of the taste of it on her lips or tongue. She lifted her eyes toward her husband and shook her head. “I…I don’t know what to say to you. I honestly….”
David uprooted his hands and pushed off from the island. He leaned against the refrigerator and crossed his arms. “Two brothers take their father’s car for a joyride. They crash into a stone wall because the older one can’t—”
“Brian.” Connie focused on the refrigerator, on a point above David’s shoulder. “That’s his name. Brian.”
David hesitated before continuing. “Because Brian can’t negotiate the curve while speeding on a winding road covered in black ice. He’s dead, the other…Dale…he’s lucky to be alive in intensive care. The parents are left to pick up the pieces and grieve the loss of at least one son for the rest of their lives.” He cocked his head to the side. “And you’re looking at me like that?” He shrugged his shoulders and shook his head.
Connie did not recognize the man who spoke to her from the other side of the island; he was not the same man she had pledged her love to twenty years ago. That man was gone. That man had started dying a slow death two years ago, and it had been all the more painful to watch because it had been mostly self-inflicted because he was incapable of dealing with his own pain and grief in the midst of the tragedy through which they all had suffered.
The only thing Connie could think of to say was, “Sally and Hector.” She paused, could think only of this to add: “The parents have names, too.”
David dismissed Connie with a head shake and hand wave. She thought he might have said something, but she wasn’t sure.
Her eyes followed his movements, though not completely registering what he was doing as he pushed himself away from the refrigerator and grabbed a paper towel from the spool on the wall rack. Connie felt as she did when she had watched her uncles carry her father’s casket down the steps of the church and slide it through the open rear door of the hearse ten years ago. Watching, but too numb to see. David came around to Connie’s side of the island. He lifted her teacup. Wiped the bottom of it. Wiped the tea ring left on the island. Set the cup in its proper place on the saucer. Threw the crumpled paper towel into the trash bucket under the sink. He resumed his position on the other side of the island.
Connie blinked. She stared at David. He spoke.
“Why do they continually do the exact opposite of what we tell them?”
Connie did not acknowledge her husband.
David bent down and picked up the newspaper. He folded it and placed it on the island. “Those two,” he pointed at the paper, “deliberately chose to disobey their parents. Now look at the repercussions.”
“David...I….”
David. The name that once had the power to transform her into a giddy school-girl now sounded like a foreign word on her lips. Connie picked up the paperback, not bothering to mark her place with her finger, and stood. She looked at David. “Not everything in life is about parents issuing orders and children falling into line like obedient soldiers. Children are not soldiers or machines that can be programmed to act in a logical, preset pattern in every circumstance.” She raised an eyebrow at David. Her voice softened. “You of all people should know that is not how it works.”
“I know how it’s supposed to work.” David’s eyes held hers for a moment. In those blue eyes that once melted her heart, Connie saw more accusations that, if spoken, would do irreparable damage. Please don’t, David. Please, don’t go there. If you have any mercy left inside you, please please please do not go there. His eyes held her a moment longer. Then he turned away from her and opened the refrigerator. He removed two packages of deli meat, mayonnaise, pickles, lettuce, and a tomato. “And contrary to what you’re thinking,” David arranged the food on the island, “this isn’t about Josh and Julian. Nor is it about me. It’s about those two.” David pointed again at the paper. “I’m talking about them.”
“Oh, but David.” Connie lifted the teacup to her lips and, before taking her last sip, said, “You’re not.” She placed the teacup on the saucer. Studying David as he unwrapped the ham and turkey, she wondered if she would ever again be with the man she’d married. In a softer voice, she said, “You just don’t see it.”
David opened his mouth, hesitated, closed it. He opened the bread box and grabbed a loaf of wheat bread. Connie remembered the day the realtor gave them that breadbox. They had closed the deal on the house after signing numerous documents laden with paragraph after paragraph of legalese and real estate jargon that she and David hadn’t fully understood, but they had figured they’d be all right as long as the two of them were in it together. Even if they were paying a little too much for their first house, and even if they had no idea what they were doing buying a house in the first place. On that closing day, that late afternoon in mid-June, the realtor had given them the keys to the house and, as a house warming gift, the white wooden breadbox that they still used, that now sat on the new stone countertop. It now seemed anachronistic among the brushed-steel and silver and black and marble and granite and stone.
On that June day, sitting on the floor in the middle of their empty house eating crackers and cheese and drinking cheap wine, the two of them had been in love. They knew, they felt it in their souls, that they could conquer anything together.
“Here’s the thing.” David pointed a butter knife at her, which sliced through her memory. “We raise our kids the best we know how.” He spread a thin layer of mayonnaise onto each of the four slices of bread. “We feed them, clothe them, teach them—”
“Love them.” Ludlum in hand, it was Connie’s turn to cross her arms. She leaned forward, adding momentum to her words as she shot them across the island. “Don’t forget that we love them, David.”
David stopped, a slice of turkey in one hand, a leaf of lettuce in the other. “I don’t love my kids?”
Connie dropped her arms and turned to leave.
“No. Wait.”
Connie stopped and turned. David, holding his eyes steady on her, dropped the turkey and lettuce onto the bread. “That’s what you’re saying.” He wiped his hands on a dish towel and stabbed them into his hips. “I don’t love my kids.”
“You—” Connie cut herself off. She held her hands out, palms up, considered what she was about to say, and decided to change tack. “This is the same speech I hear every time you’re upset with Joshua. Right now? I’m not in the mood.”
David shook his head. Connie regretted her last comment. She knew what was coming. “Just like last night.”
It wasn’t what he said. It was how quickly and dismissively he said it. He’d already had the four bullets loaded into the gun with his itchy tongue on the trigger, ready and waiting for the first clear shot he had. He didn’t even have the decency to look at her when he shot the words at her heart. He finished making two sandwiches, wrapped them in aluminum foil, and then put everything away: meat, mayonnaise, pickles, lettuce, and half a tomato into the refrigerator, knife and plate rinsed, dried, and put into the drawer and cabinet, aluminum foil into the drawer next to the silverware, dish towel on the rack.
There was a time in their marriage when David would never have considered saying such a thing. But that was a long time ago, in a different life, seemingly in a different world. To be honest, she couldn’t even completely blame him for the way he’d changed. Circumstances happened, people reacted differently, and who was to say she hadn’t had a big part in the changes between them. She supposed she did. But at least she wanted to fix their marriage. At least she was trying.
Connie turned and headed for the stairs. Half-way up, she stopped and reversed direction, quietly descending to peak around the corner. David held a dishrag under running water. He turned the faucet off, wrung out the dishrag, and started scrubbing the counter next to the sink. The counter didn’t need to be cleaned—she cleaned it last night before going to bed and nobody had yet done anything on it today. He scrubbed it as if it was caked with week-old food and grease stains. He continued to go after every surface in the kitchen: counters, both stoves, refrigerator, both sinks, even the cupboard and cabinet doors. When he was done, he stood in the middle of the kitchen and eyed the room like a drill instructor inspecting the morning roll call. He then went to the counter next to the sink and started scrubbing again.
She pulled her head back and faded away up the stairs, a ghost slipping from a once familiar haunt in the corporeal world, retreating further into the nebulous existence of the past two years. There was no need to continue watching to know he would go through the entire process again and, if it was really bad this morning, maybe even a third time.
Connie wished there was a way to show her husband that it wasn’t the kitchen that he was trying to rid of ugly stains.